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Sarans
The sarans are one of the most powerful and feared races in the galaxy. They are thought to have evolved into humanoids from a race of feline predators when a radioactive comet smashed into the barren world of Kazan millennia ago. From the craggy peaks of their harsh planet, the sarans were forged into a fierce warrior race who would conquer first their planet and then most of the Known Universe. The sarans were one tribe of many which inhabited Kazan, and were by far the strongest. The dawn of their recorded history tells of mighty saran warriors raging from the north and wiping out every other tribe, using their terrible power to slaughter their enemies. After conquering their planet, the sarans were encountered by a powerful alien called King Crash, who was searching for the mystical Bloodstone. He decided to recruit the sarans as his elite warriors, and used them to cut a swath through all resistance. After tiring of taking orders, the sarans rebelled against Crash, who they came to call the Great Enemy. After a long and hard fought war, a lone warrior called the Oversaran appeared. He faced Crash and drove him off, thereafter taking the name Sarada, which means “Supreme Fang” in the saran tongue. With the saran Clans united around him, he took his people on a bloody conquest across the galaxy. They eventually cowed the mighty peacekeeping force called SENTINEL and came into possession of the legendary Bloodstone. Sarans are characterized by their black manes of hair and sharp fangs, their incredible power, and enormous sense of pride (all sarans think they are the best and that they can conquer the universe). 'Physiology' Though they look to be humans at first glance, sarans have a very feral demeanor because of their feline ancestors. Sarans have sharp fangs, eyes that narrow to slits, and their hair grows in long manes that are universally black. They tend to have amber, gold, brown, gray eyes, or very rarely red eyes and pale skin. A saran’s senses of vision, smell, hearing, taste, and touch all operate at extraordinary levels, especially their sense of smell. They also possess preternatural reflexes, high agility, and intuitive fighting knowledge. They have a high order intelligence and a natural ability to analyze patterns. The sarans are also known for their extreme will power and incredible fortitude which makes them truly terrifying opponents. The muscle, bone, and skin tissue of a saran is 3-4 times as dense as that of a human being. This contributes to the saran’s superior strength and high degree of invulnerability to physical attacks. This high density also causes them to be extremely heavy. For example, a saran male might have the appearance of an ordinary human weighing 180 pounds, but due to the greater density of his body, his actual weight might be well over 600 pounds. However, the saran’s Aura and its ability to manipulate gravity will naturally compensate for this and they always appear to be much lighter than their body density would dictate. The average saran male can lift (press) roughly 10 tons, but they can amplify their strength by charging their Aura. An S-Class saran at full charge can temporarily lift 5 times that amount. Due to their superior metabolism, sarans also possess superhuman levels of stamina in all physical activities. Sarans possess a powerful healing factor, which will also grant an increase in their level of power that is far greater than what they had prior to being injured. As the saran heals, their body adapts and evolves to match previous threats and almost neutralize them. In most cases they can heal instantaneously from all but the most serious of wounds. If a saran is injured, he or she will be able to recover much faster than humans, even recovering from impalement or partial dismemberment after a long rest. So long as a limb is not completely severed from their core, the wound will completely recover. However, the more serious the wound the longer the saran will need to rest in order to heal. Saran pregnancies last a brief period of 5-6 months. Their offspring also mature faster than most other races, reaching puberty at around the age of 7. By the ages of 15 and 12 for boys and girls respectively, they are considered adults. The sarans are among the naturally most long lived of races and remain in their prime for far longer, but they are not immortal. They can sicken, age and die, but are immune to Earth diseases and poisons and age at a much slower rate than humans. The average saran male can live up to 250 years, and the female up to 300. The average life expectancy is about 80-100, since most sarans try to meet a "suitable" end in battle. When sarans die, their bodies quickly deteriorate into ash. They don’t leave corpses. 'Powers' Sarans possess physical attributes that operate on superhuman levels. Their bone and muscle tissue is denser than a human’s, endowing them with supernatural strength and resilience. They also have enhanced metabolism, durability, and reflexes far beyond the levels of humans. Sarans are able to generate extremely potent Auras, which they can use to enhance their physical strength, speed, and endurance. They can also employ this energy to negate the force of gravity around them, enabling them to fly. In an Earthlike atmosphere, sarans are able to attain many times the speed of sound. Sarans have considerable powers of super strength and speed, invulnerability, flight, and energy projection. Their recuperative powers are also formidable, as they can take an extraordinary amount of damage and continue fighting. They are also able to sacrifice their Aura in order to summon Burning Flames which grant them a number of unique abilities, including powerful attacks, shields, teleportation, telepathy, healing, etc. Sarans are ranked according to how much Aura they can generate. In ascending order these ranks are Class D, C, B, A, and Class S being the highest. Sarans are extremely sensitive to energies, and can usually tell the identity and strength of someone by sensing their Aura. High level sarans are able to suppress their Aura so as to appear invisible. However, despite their incredible strength, reflexes, fortitude, and powers of energy manipulation, the sarans are most known for their unmatchable speed. They are regarded as the naturally fastest race in the known universe. Even without using their power of flight, they are able to move many times faster than the eye can see. 'Personality' Sarans tend to share common personality traits, even at young ages. Being a war-like people, they share an innate enjoyment for conflict and fighting. Sarans are typically very aggressive and hard-headed, with short explosive tempers. They are an intensely proud people, with a society heavily based around honor and social hierarchy. Courage and strength are highly respected among them, and they have been known to praise these traits even in their enemies. Sarans regard fighting as fun, and are generally thrilled at the prospect of a strong opponent. Conversely they tend to become extremely disappointed if their opponent isn’t as strong as they had thought. They have a tendency to let their emotions get the better of them when roused in stimulating situations, resulting in them making rash decisions at times. While the sarans are known for their powerful emotions, they can also appear to lack sympathy, as shown by their relative lack of fear of death and impatience with even percieved cowardice. Sarans have an aggressive warrior culture to the point that they have no word for "nice" in the sense of demonstrating kindness or compassion, instead the nearest linguistic equivalent which they have literally means "weak". 'Culture and Society' The sarans are a proud warrior race with a harsh society built on strength and honor. Saran society before the arrival of King Crash was clannish, with small bands of sarans waging constant war with eachother over scant resources. During this period, each Clan had a Chief, under whom were the free men and women who would be expected to fight when the Chief called on them. At other times they tended to their vocations, which was usually farming and raising cattle. The Clans tended to live communally, and no one suffered unless all suffered. Despite this idea of working towards a common good, personal honor was of the utmost importance to sarans and infighting even between Clansmen was common. There was a caste of slave girls at this time (as with later, male children deemed unacceptable were left to die in the wilderness), but they had far fewer responsibilities than they would have later. This changed when Crash arrived on Kazan. Recognizing the untapped military potential of the sarans, he gathered them together into a unified state, patterning them off of the warrior culture that the Gods imposed on the Ogres. There were a few differences though, as the sarans were a rowdier people than the stoic Ogres. The Chiefs of the more powerful Clans were elevated to the rank of Noble Lords and organized into a council which would govern saran affairs and act as the officers for his saran army. From among these Nobles Crash would select a Holy Warlord, who would rule the sarans in his name and coordinate them with the rest of the Holy Order. While each of the Nobles was allowed to keep a small retinue of bodyguards (generally between 10 and 20 strong warriors) the rest of their forces would be absorbed into the Saran Army, which would become the vanguard of the Holy Order. Sarans were generally organized into small teams of 5, with one acting as the leader, though he would often have a second in command. It was very common for these teams to only listen to their leader, and the leader to only listen to one of the Nobles or the Holy Warlord. Most sarans never met Crash himself. In the beginning it was arranged that no more than 2 from the same Clan would be on a team together, which occasionally was the cause for much in-fighting. However, within a generation most sarans had abandoned their Clan identity for loyalty to their team. To free up the free sarans for service in the army, more and more of the responsibilities of the upkeep of society fell on the slave girl caste. The slave caste included a number of specializations including scribes, nurses, farmers, artisans, pleasure slaves, etc. Slave girls could be noted by the slave brand burned into their left buttock and slave collar. The brand marked the job to which the slave girl had been trained while the collar bore the name of their owner and was also inscribed with binding runes to seal their Aura to keep them from being dangerous. Slave girls were generally property of the state, but a soldier could buy one he liked with spoils of war. In both ancient saran society and the one created by Crash, this caste was entirely female. This was because of the saran practice of leaving rejected male infants to die in the wilderness of exposure. Pre-Crash saran infants were inspected by the elders of the Clan, and those males deemed weak or deficient were left out to die. When Crash took over Kazan, he brought with him the Gods’ technology which gave the sarans a more reliable standard for gauging the strength of their young. At Crash’s recommendation, rejects were placed aboard space pods and exiled away from Kazan. There they’d land on planets and wreak havoc, since for most races in the universe even a saran reject is a formidable problem. These wild rejects would typically cause major damage to a resistant planet’s infrastructure leaving it easy pickings for a follow up force to come and claim it in the name of the Holy Order. Because of this practice, saran females on Kazan outnumber males by about 4:1. Those children that ARE deemed acceptable are generally turned over to the state to raise since their parents are often away on missions. During downtimes however, saran parents will commonly look in on their children. Though it is predominantly the mothers who do this, fathers will as well. It is often part of the education for a saran child that they have to battle their parents at several points during their education to test their strength. While the adult will call a stop to it after a certain point, the child is not allowed to yield. Childhood for saran children is full of constant training and survival tests at the hands of warriors who act as teachers. As the children come of age and are considered adults (12 for girls and 15 for boys), they are made full warriors and are assigned to a team. Upon becoming warriors, they are assigned private quarters, though Pair Bonded couples will often share quarters. Life for saran warriors is generally quite rowdy. They spend their time either away on missions or home on Kazan where they spend their time alternately partying and training. The saran appetite for eating, drinking and sex is almost as legendary as their battle-lust. In most cases sarans don’t pre-occupy themselves with their offspring, as only the Noble Families make a point of having heirs. Sarans have no system of marriage as it is understood by other races because of the drastic number gap between the sexes. Instead, sarans of both sexes are known to be notoriously promiscuous and unintentional pregnancies are not uncommon. The exception to this is the Pair Bonding, when two compatible sarans form a psychic link with eachother, after which no other person will do. Through this link, the pair can experience all the feelings and sensations of the other. A Pair Bonded saran can often sense the location of their partner even if the other is suppressing their Aura to hide themselves. Sarans have no control over who they Bond with, but once the link is forged it cannot be broken unless one of them dies. While the Bond does not mean that a saran can ONLY fornicate with their Bonded Mate, it does make it so no one else is as fulfilling for them. The society structured by Crash was kept intact after his deposing at the hands of Sarada, though the authority of the Holy Warlord was seized by the newly declared King and his successors. When Crash returned and once again seized control of the sarans thanks to the betrayal of Zanko, the latest Oversaran, he restored the authority of the Holy Order over the sarans. Zanko was granted the title of Holy Ghost, making him Crash’s high priest and chief representative in this galaxy. The Holy Ghost would empower a quartet of his most powerful fighters as Holy Warlords, whose power was above that of the Nobles. These Holy Warlords would later be replaced themselves by the Deathwalk Assassins, shadowy figures modeled on the 4 Angels of Death who served the Gods during the Heroic Age. While the Holy Ghost held dominion over all the races loyal to Crash through the religious authority, worship of the God King was never treated very seriously by most sarans. Instead the sarans respected strength, and the Holy Order was obeyed by the Saran Nobles and the Saran Army because of the power of the Holy Ghost and his Holy Warlords. It was this strength that the Holy Ghost used to ensure the loyalty of the Nobles despite his unpopularity, which bound many of them to his authority even after a Sarada heir appeared and attempted to restore his Clan to the Throne. 'Religion' That the sarans had religion is a bit of a misnomer. The sarans believed in a pantheon of beings they regarded as gods. The chief of the saran gods was Sara, the one eyed warrior king who legend had it was the father of all sarans. Second in importance was Sara’s son Sora, the hammer wielding god of war, followed by the other myriad members of Sara’s tribe. Sara’s existence was taken as a matter of fact by most sarans, though he was rarely prayed to or invoked as it was believed that he was an ambivalent deity who would be more inclined to send troubles and challenges to sarans for his own amusement than blessings. Despite this often after a successful battle, the sarans would sacrifice a captive enemy to Sara as a thank you for a great fight. When Crash took over the sarans he made himself an object of worship to them. As Crash was incredibly strong and awed the sarans with his abilities, they agreed to respect his power. However, worship of him was treated with the same general ambivalence as the worship of Sara. It would not be until much later when the Deathwalk Cain was in Hell did he discover the origins of his people in the Burning Circle which had been home to Sara and his tribe, the original sarans who were worshipped by people as gods. There he would learn that Sara and his tribe appeared on ancient Kazan through a bleed between Hell and the Midplane and would conquer the planet, breeding with the life there and giving birth to the saran race as he knew them. Following the second reign of the Holy Order over Kazan, most sarans just regarded the gods of the Old Ways as myths meant to inspire the sarans to acts of bravery. Cain pointed out that Sora bore many features which became common in the Sarada Royal Clan and mused that in the hammer wielding god he might see his ancestor. 'The Oversaran' The legendary warrior of the saran race, this advanced state of saran warrior has the ability to drastically augment his speed, strength and energy by transforming his body. When a saran becomes an Oversaran, his body turns red, his fangs, claws and mane grow, and his eyes assume a bright glow. Once transformed, the Oversaran becomes a “super being,” gaining a colossal boost in all of his physical abilities, such as strength and durability, and becoming impervious to pain. The first saran King, Sarada, was also the first Oversaran. The incredible power of the Oversaran was what gave him the power to defeat the Great Enemy. However, the Oversaran form is not without its drawbacks, as the heightened aggression brought out by it can manifest as a completely different personality which will not differentiate between enemies and allies.